Night Soldiers

Phanariot Greeks who had once served as the bureaucracy of Turkish and Boyar rule. Those days were gone, of course, now they were simply fishermen who took their boats out on the Black Sea.

The sea was black, a curiosity of nature, teeming with life just below the surface, then, fifty fathoms down, a dead place with a bizarre chemistry of water. The normal oxygen had, in some ancient time, been replaced by poisonous hydrogen sulfide and nothing could live in it. So whatever died in the surface waters drifted down to the lower depths where, because there was no oxygen, it did not decompose. Think of it, they would tell the rare visitor. Sailors, great fishes, boats, sea monsters-it was all still down there.

They had a slightly peculiar vision of life in Sfintu Gheorghe, but that served them well during the second week in April because peculiar things went on. First, there was the madman. There were those who claimed the whole business started right there. Others disagreed. The Fortunate One, they’d say; the madman had nothing to do with it, he just happened to be around when the Fortunate One made his grandiose gesture. Nobody, however, denied that the madman had been there first, showing up on the tenth of April and hiding in the church.

Hiding really wasn’t the word for it. Everyone knew he was there. A fellow with a bald head and a scraggy beard, clutching a piece of burlap that held a sheaf of soiled paper. Well, they thought, since the war some very odd people had shown up in the village, the madman was just one more, and he didn’t bother anybody. He spent his days in the tiny loft inside the onion dome atop the church, coming out at night to relieve himself. The priest would leave him a little something to eat, and they all waited to see what he would do. A few of them had hidden up there themselves, when some dangerous person from the government came looking for them-it was the official village hiding place, and the madman, for the moment, was welcome to it.

Then, on the morning of April 12, the magnificent gift was made to appear-as though by sorcery. A fisherman discovered it on the beach, crossed himself, prayed to God, then ran like the devil to spread the news. He brought with him the note he found, and read it aloud as people gathered to see what was going on: To the Good People of Sfintu Gheorghe, Greetings and God’s Blessing. For those who sheltered a man when he was cold, who fed him when he hungered, and who consoled him in the darkest hour of his life, a gift of appreciation.

He signed himself The Fortunate One.

Who was that?

Many candidates were suggested-the villagers combed their memories for lost travelers or storm-beached sailors that they’d helped-but no one of them was considered a certainty. His gesture, on the other hand, could easily enough be explained. The wicker hampers came from Istanbul, almost due south of them on the Black Sea, and they were clearly marked with an address in Turkish-a certain shop on a certain street, obviously the grandest of places. This man, whoever he might be, had been helped by the village-nursed back to health, some said-then traveled on to Istanbul, where he had made his fortune. Now, later in life, he had determined to make peace with his memories and acted lavishly to repay an old kindness. He must be, they decided, a very fortunate one indeed, for there were twenty hampers. Half the village gathered around them as their contents were revealed. Fresh hams. Purple grapes. Tomatoes. Squash. Even eggplant, the most treasured vegetable of all Romanians. Pears. Peaches. And Spanish champagne-at least thirty cases of it. How, someone asked, could you even have an eggplant in April? Where did these things come from? Not from any farmer they’d ever heard of. Grown in a glass house, others said, shaking their fingers up and down as though they’d been burned-the universal sign language meaning very expensive. It was all perishable, would have to be eaten that very night, so preparations for a great feast were immediately undertaken.

There was, in the otherwise joyous proceedings, one sour note. Sometime on the afternoon of the twelfth a few Bucharest types, tough guys in city clothes, showed up at Sfintu Gheorghe accompanied by a big, nasty-looking Russian in a leather coat, with his hair sheared off so you could see the big nasty bulge at the back of his skull. They were looking for the madman, though they weren’t very specific about it. This threatened to put a severe damper on matters, for if they took the madman they would also, clearly, take those who had aided him. But the people of Sfintu Gheorghe had not survived the horrendous regimes of their country for nothing. The city types weren’t going to be a problem-their eyes lit up when they saw the bounty and they immediately went to work on the peaches. The Russian was another matter. He was the sourest thing they’d ever seen, so they determined to sweeten him up in a very traditional way. A couple of dark little girls with black eyes took him off somewhere and fucked him senseless. To begin with, they teased him into drinking a bottle of champagne which, instead of slamming a lid down on his feelings or making him explode like a bomb, as the vodka tended to do, rendered him giddily lightheaded and merry as a goat. He took a little black-haired girl under each arm and vanished in a swirl of giggles and wasn’t seen again for two days, at which time he was discovered sitting in the mud in his un- derdrawers, holding his head with one hand and his balls with the other.

At 8:30 on the evening of the twelfth, the Brovno pulled into Galati harbor and Khristo walked up a long ramp onto the quay, Ivo at his side. The docks were lit by dazzling floodlights, and he could see a small army of welders crawling around in the skeletons of newly raised cranes, showers of blue sparks raining down through the girders.

“Good luck,” Ivo said. He reached into a pocket and handed over a thick packet of Romanian lei.

Khristo was a little taken aback, it was a great deal of money.

“From your friends,” Ivo said. “It’s a cold world without friends.”

“It is from Drazen Kulic?”

“Him. And others.”

“You will thank him for me?”

“Of course. There is also this: it is suggested that you take a taxi to Sfintu Gheorghe-no need to walk with all that money. Best to show the driver that you have sufficient means for the ride. Then, on your way back, use the same taxi. Lake Murigheol is one place you ought to see, as long as you’ve come this far. Quite beautiful in the spring, it’s said. And you should have it all to yourself-tourists are not expected.”

“Is it close to Sfintu Gheorghe?”

“Some few kilometers. The man who drives the taxi ought to be able to find it.”

They shook hands. “Thank you,” Khristo said.

“My pleasure. Now the work begins-a hundred papers to be stamped by idiots, then we’ll have to shove this wretched pipe all the way back to Yugoslavia. Up stream.” He grimaced at the thought.

“No. Really? For God’s sake, why?”

Ivo shrugged. “We need it more than they do. Let them be satisfied with a fraternal gesture.”

“A lot of work for a fraternal gesture.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing to be done about it.” He nodded back toward the pipe-laden barge, his expression a parody of helplessness. “Wrong gauge,” he said.

There was a bonfire in Sfintu Gheorghe. Four men in shirtsleeves, ties pulled down, were dancing to the music of a violin, each holding the corner of a white handkerchief. The men were very drunk, and it was not a large handkerchief. But the violin was rapturous, the crowd was banging knives and forks and tin pots, and the dancers made up in gravity what they lacked in grace. Two of the men were wearing tinted glasses, and all had holstered pistols beneath their armpits.

Khristo Stoianev, still vibrating from a three-hour taxi ride over a cart track, stood quietly at the edge of the crowd. A heavy woman turned partway toward him and stared uncertainly. He smiled warmly, clapped his hands to the rhythm with broad enthusiasm, and was rewarded with a shy smile in return. He spent some time in this way, letting them notice him, letting them accept him as someone who did not mean them harm. Villagers, he knew, could communicate without speaking-a subtle defense mechanism-and somehow come to a silent decision about the intentions of strangers. You had to let them read your character.

When they began to lose interest in him, he looked over the crowd and picked out the village priest. There would be, in such a place, a triumvirate of leadership: a headman or mayor, a queen of wives, and a local priest. Any one of them would know where Sascha was-if they did not know of him, he was not there. When people grow up in a small village, they learn all the hiding places.

The priest was not hard to find. He was a young man, with hair and beard worn long in the Greek Orthodox manner, and his black cassock fell to the tops of his shoes. Khristo circled the crowd casually until he stood next to him.